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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23948038">Tempis Fugit</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSleepingKnight/pseuds/TheSleepingKnight'>TheSleepingKnight</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Parahumans - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, One-Shot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:15:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,550</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23948038</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSleepingKnight/pseuds/TheSleepingKnight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: String Theory busts out of the Birdcage to help out her niece Dinah.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Tempis Fugit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Ninety Seconds. </em>
</p>
<p>She'd heard, of course. Even in the Birdcage, there are ways to stay updated about what was happening on the outside. It’s one of the favors you could pay for, by whatever means you have. For her, those are contracts— a promise of safety or services rendered. And eventually, enough favors had gotten her the news, in the form of a letter from her family, still living in that insignificant city in the east.</p>
<p>Her niece. Her little Dinah.</p>
<p>
  <em>Taken. </em>
</p>
<p>That is not acceptable.</p>
<p>She’s been planning an escape, of course. Everyone— well, <em>most </em>everyone did. But now… no. No more waiting. She could make it work. The timetable just had to be accelerated, that’s all. Equipment for building devices wasn’t actually hard to come by, it was just the matter of assembling it without their wyvernish warden noticing.</p>
<p>Of course, for her…</p>
<p>As with all things, it is simply a matter of time.</p>
<p>
  <em>Sixty-Eight Seconds. </em>
</p>
<p>Her hands move without her really thinking about it: she’s imagined this so many times it’s all but muscle memory, fantasy becoming reality as her body goes on autopilot. She just needs to finish assembling this little piece while Dragon still isn’t watching her specifically. It’s delicate work, programming something without even a functional keyboard, especially something as complex as this, but beggars can’t be choosers.</p>
<p>
  <em>Forty-Five Seconds. </em>
</p>
<p>And with a spark, she added the final touch, sliding the miniature computer into her pocket, and then all but diving to finish assembly of the bigger projects. She’d pre-made the modular components months ago, now it was just a matter of slotting them altogether.</p>
<p>
  <em>Thirty-Four Seconds.</em>
</p>
<p>First piece assembled.</p>
<p>
  <em>Twenty-Three Seconds.</em>
</p>
<p>Second device completed.</p>
<p>
  <em>Twelve Seconds.</em>
</p>
<p>Third…</p>
<p>Her digital stopwatch screamed as the timer hit zero, and she finished assembly.</p>
<p>A moment to breathe.</p>
<p>And then she started moving, and her stopwatch automatically started a new timer. She had precisely one minute and forty-eight seconds to reach the end of her cellblock.</p>
<p>Dragon’s eyes immediately caught her hurried pace, and her voice blared throughout the prison.</p>
<p>
  <em>“String Theory. Return to yourself to your cellblock and relinquish your tinkertech armaments.” </em>
</p>
<p>“Sorry, Dragon.” She mutters. “I’m afraid I’m on a rather strict schedule.”</p>
<p>“<em>Time puns?” </em>Dragon asked, bemused even as the walls began to shift in response to her noncompliance.</p>
<p>“Any good villain worth her salt has a few one-liners up her sleeve.” She sniffs, raising her pistol and burning a hole right through a barrier. “Otherwise, how else are you to keep up a reputation?”</p>
<p>“<em>I feel obligated to inform you that every time you destroy part of the prison. It’s another amenity removed.” </em></p>
<p>“I’ll live without ice cream, I suppose.” She muses, even as she has to break into a dead run to vault over a rising wall, and then slide through another closing door.</p>
<p>“<em>String Theory, if you continue, I’ll have to start responding with force.” </em></p>
<p>“Relax, Dragon.” She says, sliding two of her pistols together, the tinkertech effortless emerging and re-integrating to form a more powerful railgun, punching a hole straight through a set of reinforced doors. “I’m not even planning to shoot the moon this time.”</p>
<p>“<em>And what are you planning on doing, Clara Alcott?” </em></p>
<p>She makes a point of looking at the security cameras, hoping that Dragon is staring right back. “Resolving a <em>family matter</em>.” And she punctuates that by destroying aforementioned camera, and then switches to a different firing mode, firing precisely and then tearing a panel off of the nearby wall, discovering the mess of wires within.</p>
<p>Dragon had tried hard to prevent any Tinker from being able to access any of the Birdcage’s operating systems from within the prison itself, which is why it wasn’t done on wifi. Far too risky that someone like her might simply hack in. Having all necessary hard-wires at the edges of the prison made it harder for any escapee to do any damage of value before the veritable hordes of drones descended upon them. Fortunately, she’s done all of the prepwork in advance. And with just a few wires pulled this way and that way… attach her miniature computer...</p>
<p>“A horse stands by a fence, tied to a ten-foot long rope. Yet it drinks from a river, fifteen feet away. How does it do this?” With a spark, the system springs to life. “No one bothered to tie the rope to the fence.”</p>
<p>She places the panel pack on the wall, and glances at her stopwatch.</p>
<p>A new timer had begun: Three minutes, twenty-eight seconds. She’s still on the clock.</p>
<p>She turns and begins marching back out of the hole she blasted in, switching firing modes once more. The cellblock was devoid of inmates— They had heard the same thing she was hearing now.</p>
<p>The swarm of Dragon’s drones, descending like a wave made from metal and malice, armed to the teeth with tear gas, tranquilizers, and more lethal options, should be <em>disruptive. </em></p>
<p>“<em>Give up, Clara. You can’t win this fight.” </em></p>
<p>String Theory took aim at the first of the swarm she saw barreling down the corridor.</p>
<p>“That’s where you’re wrong, Dragon. This isn’t a fight. It’s a <em>math problem. </em>And no one in this prison is smarter than me.”</p>
<p>Five pounds of pressure on the trigger sends a bolt of pure power that melts through the first of the drones. The rest pour into the cell block, filling the space with shining steel and singing sirens.</p>
<p>“So, <em>darling. </em>Let’s run some equations.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>She couldn’t feel her left arm, the result of a taser. Annoying, but workable. The tear gas...well, she didn’t really have a solution for that at the moment. Her vision has long since gone watery, and she’s having more than a little trouble breathing. She glances at her stopwatch.</p>
<p>Ten seconds.</p>
<p>The floor was practically coated with the smoking corpses of drones, and yet even more continued to pour in through the one exit from this place.</p>
<p>“<em>I’m sorry, Clara. I really didn’t want to hurt you.” </em>Dragon took her stillness for surrender. Idiot.</p>
<p>“Yes, I’m sure.” She mutters aloud, propping herself up against a wall.</p>
<p>“<em>I did warn you that you couldn't win.”</em></p>
<p>“You’re being uncharacteristically stupid, Dragon. Did you think my plan was to shoot my way out of here, like every other Neanderthal in this place?” She scoffed. “I’m not some two-bit terrorist.” She checks her watch, the timer having just run out. “Can you hear me?” She asks. The screen went dark, and then lit up with a single word:</p>
<p>
  <strong>Yes. </strong>
</p>
<p>“Kill the drones.” She hisses.</p>
<p>And with a great clatter, they fall, like angels having their wings torn by god, and all is hush and silent in the cell block.</p>
<p>“...<em>you built an AI.” </em>Dragon had never sounded more apprehensive. “<em>You actually constructed an AI with nothing but bartered scraps and uploaded it into the Birdcage security systems.”</em></p>
<p>“Only way to beat you was to seize control. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve had quite enough of your voice.” She sniffed, and hit a button on her stopwatch. There. Now, to start a new timer…</p>
<p>“...<em>I’m still here, Clara.”</em></p>
<p>“Wha— blast. Wrong button.”</p>
<p>She actually killed the cameras this time, and dragged out an undamaged drone from the pile. She had maybe a few minutes before one of Dragon’s rapid-response suits showed up, along with a host of PRT backup. She had her new AI— name, name, ah, <em>Lancelot— </em>reactivate and take control of it, grabbing her with steel claws and raising her up. She switched firing modes once more—this one simply displaced matter in front of her within a strict radius, but it also massively drained the power core. She had precisely two shots to make this work, and the railgun would be completely fried after that, and she had only a modular pistol as back up.</p>
<p>First shot… the doors to the tube. She squeezes the trigger, and they are simply gone, and she is in the damned passageway she had descended in chains, so long ago…</p>
<p>Shifting to her pistol, she uses a simple laser cutter to carve out a whole big enough to fly through, and she escapes the pipe. Now she’s...oh my, the mountain’s insides are...dark. She has Lancelot switch on the headlights of the drone even as she flies towards the ceramic-lined walls. Closer… Closer…</p>
<p>Boom.</p>
<p>She erases the chuck of mountainside even as she fires the drones engines at full power, sending her rocketing into the darkness even as containment foam began rapidly expanding to reseal the breach she’d just made. Come on, faster, <em>faster—</em></p>
<p>She makes it outside, and the sunlight <em>hits </em>her like a physical blow, warmth smacking her in the face with delightful pain. She had...forgotten. The sun. It’s...nice.</p>
<p>She has her drone fall, taking her lower, lower, setting down in the surrounding woods, still a little shocked by how many things had faded while she was in the cage: the smell of the earth, the way sunlight streams through the branches, the sound of bark crunching beneath her feet.</p>
<p>Still. She couldn’t spend all day looking at nature. Dragon was no doubt on her way, tracking her at this very minute, and she needed to get a move on.</p>
<p>She had a niece to save.</p>
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